Hot Dog Man

There’s something about a hot dog vendor that appeals to the simplicity in us.

That’s probably why a Ross Perot manages to stir interest. He evokes images of a little guy slapping mustard on a red hot in a small town somewhere while humming the Star Spangled Banner.

We see hot dog vendors as a metaphor for those times when everything seemed easier, when you could trust your bankers, when you could walk the streets at night and when lyingpolitician wasn’t one word.

And that’s why Mort Diamond appeals.

He’s an honest and a decent man marching toward City Hall armed with nothing more than a willingness to work for the little people, of whom he is no doubt one.

Mort is a hot dog vendor. Nothing pleases him more than to stand at a street corner in Canoga Park and sell franks out of his cart while talking with every lunch-hour passerby.

Everyone knows Mort. He’s the little fat guy you’d like to see make a success of himself and some day, who knows, he might.

I sing of him today because he has once more announced his candidacy for City Council, challenging incumbent Joy Picus to battle him next year on the streets where the hot dog vendor abides.

Mort ran against her four years ago and managed only 1,600 votes, about 7% of the total.

Most of us would take that as a message never to run again, but not Mort. “I may have lost the election,” he announces grandly, “but I haven’t lost my principles.”

I first met him when he was a front-line soldier in the Hot Dog Wars of 1987.

Mort was busily rounding up L.A. County’s 800 hot dog vendors to join him in a fight to change a law that required them to store their carts in special commissaries, rather than at home.

They got the law changed with the help of Supervisor Mike Antonovich, a simple man who believes the hot dog, not the bald eagle, ought to be the symbol of America.

Now anyone with fewer than two carts can store them at home. But the County Health Department, not to be out-maneuvered, said fine . . . as long as their homes included proper storage facilities.

To create such a facility would cost Mort $20,000 he doesn’t have. The need has temporarily put him out of the hot dog business. The cart that once graced the corner of Sherman Way and Owensmouth sits idle.

It was during the fight that Mort became politicized. He decided he would battle City Hall by becoming a part of it and, as it were, gnaw from within.

Mort would run for the City Council.

Fund-raisers were held in pizza parlors, signs went up and Mort lost 75 pounds off his ample frame going from door to door.

It was, at best, an uphill battle.

Picus, a good friend of builders and real estate developers, faced Mort’s $2,200 war chest with $260,000 of her own, and swallowed Mort like a sperm whale sucking in plankton.

But the Hot Dog Man is bouncing back.

Since that last defeat, Mort at 60 has gone to college and become a paralegal to better wage a new campaign.

“The day after I lost the election, I decided I’d do it again,” he said the other day in Henri’s coffee shop, just down the street from Casey’s Tavern, where swearing is not allowed.

Mort would like to see taxes lowered and the laws governing small businesses eased to put more people to work.

But above all, he wants everyone happy.

“You don’t see people smiling anymore,” the Hot Dog Man says, frowning. “No one has smiled in L.A. since the Olympics. We can’t keep having Olympics, so I guess there’s got to be something else.”

What that something else might be seems, well, elusive to Mort, but he’s serious about pursuing it. And whatever else you might say about him, never question his determination.

He’s the kind of guy who will walk into a neighborhood garage filled with outlaw bikers and ask them to take a Nazi flag the hell off their wall. He did that once because children were afraid to pass the place.

One of the bikers looked at Mort for a long time and finally said, “I’ll give you credit, man. You’ve got balls.” They didn’t take the flag down . . . but they did move out of the neighborhood.

“You can’t be afraid,” Mort said, sipping coffee. “You’ve got to walk right up and talk to people.”

I’ve got a lot of doubts about the honesty and courage of just about every member of L.A.’s City Council. I have none about Mort.

And even if he doesn’t raise a dime or get a single vote, I hope this message comes through: The time may be fast approaching when we ought to give the city back to the hot dog vendors.